Top 4 Q4 Practices for Fuel Card Customers

The fourth quarter is a great time to reevaluate the previous months of the year and make sure that things are on track to wrap up the year on a good note. Fleet owners and managers can get caught up in the details of running the fleet, forgetting to implement best fuel card practices that will save needed resources. Good practices will help any company get the most out of their fuel card services.

Review Controls

Different drivers and routes mean your needs can change a lot over the course of a year. Review controls to make sure that they are still relevant for your fleet. Certain drivers might need stricter controls than others. Gallons per fill up might need to be increased based on route length. Resetting controls will reduce time taken up with tracking down overspending or resetting cards for regular purchases.

Identify Irregularities

Just paying the fuel card bill may be all the fuel card company requires, but closer inspection of the breakdown of charges will be beneficial. You should never be too busy to identify and track down irregularities. These irregularities are the holes in your boat of your company, leaking money. They must be plugged. Ignoring them could sink your company.

Test Your Alerts

It may have been a while since you got alerts that a card was being used beyond its preset limits. On the other hand, maybe you’ve never gotten an alert. Set up a test with your fuel card service to make sure that alerts are going through. Test email and text message alerts. It’s the equivalent of a fire alarm. If you don’t know there is a fire, you can’t put it out.

Keep an Eye on Fuel Types

Very few fleet vehicles require premium gas, so if your trucks are being filled with premium, then that is wasted money. Even midgrade can cause extra expenditure. Contrary to popular belief, premium won’t make an engine run better unless it is designed to run on it.

Diesel is what most fleet trucks run on. Tracking of your fill-ups on specific trucks will allow you to gauge when DEF has to be added to the emissions system, and which drivers are keeping up with filling it when it runs low. If DEF runs low, a truck can limp to a gas station at 5 mph, but this inconvenience will slow down delivery times that day.

If you have a fleet that runs both diesel and gas, connect a fuel card to each specific truck, setting limits to allow only the correct fuel. This way, you aren’t stuck with expensive truck repairs stemming from the wrong fuel.

Keep This Q4 Trouble Free

A Fuelz fuel card can keep your fourth quarter trouble free. With the right purchasing limits in place and active alerts, company assets will be protected. Analyzing data from purchases will allow you to make even better decisions about how to use the card to your fleet’s advantage. Complete customization through the online portal allows detailed tracking of exactly what you need to see.

Call Fuelz today to discover the benefits of our fuel card services for your fleet.